Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the Anti-Lynching Crusade https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1gf_mUBRXLpirWTlzcBLe50T7tx3qPyG32o2supbVrhw/edit?usp=sharing

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Ida B. Wells Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases (1892) Let me give you thanks for your faithful paper on the lynch abomination now generally practiced against colored people in the South. There has been no word equal to it in convincing power. I have spoken, but my word is feeble in comparison. You give us what you know and testify from actual knowledge. You have dealt with the facts with cool, painstaking fidelity and left those naked and uncontradicted facts to speak for themselves. Brave woman! you have done your people and mine a service which can neither be weighed nor measured. If American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read. Frederick Douglass - letter to Ida B. Wells, published in a Lynch Law in all its Phases “If this work can contribute in anyway toward proving this and at the same time arouse the conscience of the American people to demand justice to every citizen, and punishment by law for the lawless, I shall feel I have done my race a service. Other considerations are minor.” Ida B. Wells Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases (1892)

What is a Crusade? What is chivalry?

Ida B. Wells and the anti-lynching crusade

Who was she? Born into slavery in 1862 - oldest of four children Parents and one brother died in 1878 from yellow fever - began teaching career as a means to try and make enough money to keep her younger siblings together

September 15, 1883 Wells bought a ticket for the first class ladies’ car on the C & O RR Entering first at the colored car, saw a drunk white man and men smoking so she opted for the ladies’ car Conductor asked her to leave - said he wanted to “treat her like a lady” but she would have to go to the colored car: “I replied that if he wished to treat me like a lady, he would leave me alone.” When the conductor proceeded to pull her out of the seat, ripping her sleeve, Wells scratched and bit the conductor

1888 Became the co-owner of the Free Speech and Headlight newspaper in Memphis, TN While the city of Memphis followed to the Jim Crow Laws, it was viewed as a “moderate” southern city by comparison...that would change quickly in 1892

History of lynching

Lynching as a crime... Senate Bill S3178 - December 19, 2018 Why did it take so long and how did we get here?

History of Lynching Described as “extra legal” justice, but the motivations behind lynching evolve from targeting “traitors to the patriot cause” to racially-drive hate crimes 0-3:30 - “It is a privilege not a right.” - the rationale of Booker T. Washington - if you work hard - you will get there.

By 1886, the number of African Americans lynched exceeded the number of whites The excuse for lynching? The protection of white women The person to openly challenge this myth? Ida B. Wells Barnett

As a journalist, Ida B. Wells uses her investigative skills to research lynchings and wrote: “Nobody in this section of the country believes the old thread-bare lie that Negro men rape white women. If Southern white men are not careful, they will overreach themselves and public sentiment will have a reaction; a conclusion will then be reached which will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.”

1892 Three men Calvin McDowell, Will Stewart, and Thomas Moss opened a grocery called The People’s Grocery in a neighborhood of Memphis called the Curve Across the street was a grocery owned by a white man W.H. Barrett who claimed that any disturbances he created lay solely at the feet of those three men... Start at 3 minutes

March 1892 The men were arrested on March 5 and one of whom, Thomas Moss, was nowhere near the violence earlier that evening that resulted in the shooting of two officers. However, as a co-owner of the grocery, the police had already decided that he too was a target Early in the morning on March 10, the decision had been made...

With the murder of her friend, her Crusade had been born. The three men were taken to the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad yards and murdered Lynching at the Curve Thomas Moss was a good friend of Wells- she was, in fact, the Godmother to one of his children. This matter would not end in those railroad yards. With the murder of her friend, her Crusade had been born. Start at 3 minutes

While accused men were unable to defend themselves, Wells spoke for them at a cost to herself. In her diary she wrote My friends declared that the trains and my home were being watched by white men who promised to kill me on sight. They also told me that colored men were organized to protect me if I should return. They said it would mean more bloodshed, more widows and orphans if I came back, and now that I was out of it all, to stay away where I would be safe from harm....

A Lynch Law in all its Phases and A Red Record For A Red Record According to Wells, what were the reasons given for lynching? How does she contradict them? How is the concept of chivalry applied here? For “Lynching is Color-Line Murder” How does she use her research to support her argument? How does she use American values to appeal to her audience for action against lynching?

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